Ballad of the Sad Café

With my days of indentured servitude here at the Big Bad Bullshit Business rapidly coming to a close, and with it my opportunities to go hog-wild in my favourite corner of the globe on a daily basis, I thought it was time to grab one last blow-out meal at the New Piccadilly on Denman Street.

The New Piccadilly will soon be going the way of deeley-boppers, videocassettes and Vanilla Ice. Apart from the fact that, y’know, the New Piccadilly is actually good and will be missed. The owner is hanging up his spatula, retiring and selling up.

It’s not just the quality of the food, the reasonably priced menu, the slightly-camp uniforms the waiters wear, the comfort in knowing that you can ALWAYS get a table, or the fact that both formica and cholesterol are in plentiful supply. All fine reasons for going there, but that’s not it. It’s the sad realisation that another part of My London is being shunted out of the real world and into the sepia-coloured contours of my memory.

My grandparents used to have a place like that. When they first came over from Cyprus, they had a greasy spoon on the Parkway in Camden. The floor was sheer geometric perfection, with black and white tiles from the front door to the kitchen. Then they had a place in Willesden in the late seventies / early eighties that I vividly remember. The ketchup dispensers shaped like big, red plastic tomatoes. My grandfather behind the counter cooking up the food, his beaming smile always visible through the fugue of greasy smoke, and my grandmother bussing tables with nothing but a stubby pencil, crumpled notepad and her ever-present hairnet keeping the thick, black strands of Mediterranean hair out of her face. I don’t think I ever saw her without that hairnet on.

I wish I valued the place whilst it was still there. To me it was just the place where my grandparents used to make me food. I remember that my brother and I always used to complain that we didn’t want to eat there. We wanted MacDonald’s…

That place was worth a million Big Macs.

For the record, I had a Mixed Grill (bacon, sausage, egg, chips, peas and steak), bread and butter, two large Cokes and a slice of apple pie with cream. I had a mad sugar jag and a bloated gut for the rest of the afternoon, but it was worth it.  

Cheers

Coach: What's new, Norm?
Norm: I need something to hold me over until my second beer.
Coach: How about a first beer?
Norm: That'll work.
 
Lunchtime drinking always seems like a better idea before than it does after. Empty stomach, a five-minute walk over to The Glasshouse Stores on Brewer Street, and the cheapest booze in London. I can conclusively say that my productivity will be severely diminished this afternoon. Fuck it. What are they gonna do? Fire Me? (I love that – it never gets old.)
 
Trying to hide the evidence by shielding my dilated pupils and moving cautiously yet purposefully. Chugging Smints like a pill addict to hide the beery odour. Finally getting around to eating some lunch (something I really should have done beforehand).
 
Need to blast the fog from my mind by the end of the day. I’m going out for a session this evening as well. (Readers of the sublime Don’t Explain Don’t Complain will know this already). And if I remember my history, the potential for messiness is high.
 
Woody: Pour you a beer, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: All right, but stop me at one. Make that one-thirty.

Go get ‘em, tiger

What else? Saw Spider-Man 2 over the weekend. After my disappointment with the first film in the franchise, the sequel excelled. The CGI has improved, but it still isn’t quite there yet. I still don’t believe that a man is swinging through the valleys and canyons of New York. But, mad props to Sam Raimi - he has a firm grasp of just how important New York City is to the Spider-Man mythology, making it an integral part of the story. Not only that, he is making the most of the best rogue’s gallery and supporting cast in comics. Doctor Octopus, J. Jonah Jameson, Aunt May – it’s all so good. And very funny, too.
 
And make sure you come back tomorrow for some big, exciting news. (Well, exciting for me, anyway. It might mean absolutely nothing to you.)

The glass has got some water in it

I like to think of myself as, on balance, an optimistic person. Not that you’d know that from reading this blog recently. Everything seems to be getting on top of me recently, putting me in an increasingly frazzled and foul mood.

This blog is teetering dangerously close to really bad stand-up comedy. It’s not very constructive for me to rail about polyphonic ringtones, people with umbrellas or cigar smokers. Pet peeves don’t always translate into good writing. If I thought it was cathartic, I’d happily write about it. Just let it all explode onto the web in a gory mess of Travis Bickle bloodletting. But it doesn’t make me feel better. It just makes me stew for longer on things that don’t really merit so much scrutiny.

Some painful belt-tightening recently has resulted in me widening my outlook to find entertainment and distractions that fall between the posts marked “Cheap” and “Free”. I’ve found it difficult to devote time to simple pleasures in the last month or so. I miss reading uninterrupted for long periods of time. I miss the feeling of loosing my imagination free of its constraints to let ideas surge onto a page. I miss the ability to sit and watch a movie without feeling my eyelids fighting to stay open. And I miss the sensation of listening to someone talk without getting aggravated and confrontational. Sometimes, just stringing a coherent sentence together is an epic task.

Yesterday, it was clear that the good weather had well and truly passed for the time being. Good news for me, as it means my hay fever has gone on hiatus. Fed up of lunch breaks that consisted of sitting in St. James’s Square munching on sandwiches, Becket & I decided to go walkabout. We ambled down to the Mall, flicked through the overpriced magazines in the ICA bookshop for ten minutes, and then headed on over to the Horse Guards Parade. Over thirty years living in this city, and I’d never really seen it properly before. The rain whipped our faces as we checked out the big-ass cannons in the courtyard. It was great.

The rest of the hour was spent deliberately treading the back streets of the city up towards Leicester Square. Browsing the graphic novels in Comic Showcase up on Charing Cross Road. Stumbling upon out-of-the-way noodle bars in the alleys around Chinatown’s Gerrard Street. Amazing to think that where Dr. Johnson once convened with his Literary Club, you can now bag some Japanese pink mags and a copy of Battle Royale II on VCD. Now that’s what I call progress.

Best lunch hour I’ve had for a very long time. And the walk was more nourishing than any sandwich could have possibly been.

Brother Ray

Murph: Tell me a little about this electric piano, Ray.
Ray: Ah, you have a good eye, my man. That's the best in the city of Chicago.
Jake: How much?
Ray: 2000 bucks and it's yours. You can take it home with you. As a matter of fact, I'll throw in the black keys for free.

The first time I saw The Blues Brothers at a young, hairless age was also my first exposure to the grandfather of soul Ray Charles, kicking some serious Hammond funk on “Shake Your Tail Feather”. It broke my fragile, unschooled mind.

There are obituaries all over the ‘net for Ray, so I’m not going to duplicate all that business here. You want to know where he was born, his discography or any of that mess, look elsewhere. This is what the man and his music meant to me.

In an age where “soul” is just as much an overused and abused word as “genius” or “classic”, Ray Charles epitomised all three. My all-time favourite Ray Charles track is still the one I’ve been playing all weekend whenever I’ve been able to snatch five minutes for myself. The title track of Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (just like the better-known “Georgia on My Mind”) opens with that unique anguished howl yanked out of the dark abyss at the core of the great Soul Men, that gives you minor heart palpitations, like a lovesick werewolf baying for heartbreaking, soul-destroying sex.

Genius + Soul = Ray, and in this age of anodyne pop “idols”, music just got a lot less interesting. I’m mildly placated by the fact that he’s now jamming with Miles, Marvin and Barry White, drinking, cussing, grooving and checking out the heavenly bodies. He deserves it.

Ray Gun

It’s not earth-shattering, but B-movie actor, Alzheimer’s sufferer and one-time POTUS Ronald Reagan is no more. And I really don’t need an excuse to draw some tenuous links between movies and current affairs.

Some aimless surfing yielded this interesting quote from Ronnie from an address to the nation on January 16, 1984: “History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”

GWB obviously wasn’t taking notes that day. Say what you like about Reagan, but the man was an actor, and he knew how to deliver a killer line. Whether he believed it or not is another thing.

My favourite Reagan-related exchange is, of course, this:

Dr. Emmett Brown: Then tell me, "future boy", who is President of the United States in 1985?
Marty McFly: Ronald Reagan.
Dr. Emmett Brown: Ronald Reagan? The actor?
(chuckles)
Dr. Emmett Brown: Who's Vice President? Jerry Lewis?
Marty McFly: What?
Dr. Emmett Brown: I suppose Jane Wyman is the first lady. And Jack Benny is Secretary of the Treasury. I've had enough practical jokes for one evening. Good night, future boy.

Magnificent Obsessions

In an unscheduled intermission from the regularly programmed meditations on films, writing, and writing on films, you’ll just have to tide yourselves over with this.

There’s a red triangle flashing neon in my mind, screaming “KEEP IN LOW GEAR”, but the beast is too hard to get a handle on, and is skidding out of control. I’ve got an inbox groaning under the weight of unanswered e-mails, film reviews pending, friends and family being neglected, the elusive next job still to be found, and a day job that I despise with a virulent intensity, especially as it keeps sapping my ability to do anything else meaningful. Thank fuck we have a 3-day weekend around the corner.

The only thing keeping me going in my snatched moments shuttling between obligations are books. There are a handful of books jostling for space amongst back issues of Empire and Time magazine in my ever-trusty bag, and they all aid in letting me hold onto the slender hair that is my lifeline between this existence and a full-on, Michael Douglas in Falling Down spaz-attack.

On the go at the moment, in no particular order:

Ed McBain’s Sadie When She Died. Slowly filling the gaps in my collection of 87th Precinct novels, and this one’s a corker. Words that crackle and pop across the page, sending you hurtling towards the end, when you just know that the trusty bulls of the 87 will prevail. Class.

Volume 7 of Tokyopop’s manga adaptation of one of my enduring fixations, Battle Royale. Eviscerations, big doe-eyes, high-tech weaponry, and the obligatory panty shots.

Ryan Gilbey’s It Don’t Worry Me. Admittedly, we don’t really need yet another book singing the praises of the 1970s American movie-brats (Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese et al), but this is a passionate and intensely personal look at a decade of great movies, and a nice counter-point to the scurrilous rumour-mongering of Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

Lee Server’s biography of the heavy-lidded hipster, Robert Mitchum, Baby, I Don’t Care. Wading through this one very slowly, but it’s worth it, covering his womanising, dope-smoking, ill-advised foray into music, and, of course, his movies.

Right, someone’s on the verge of cracking a whip again. I’m gone.

All the Write Moves

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” – The Wizard of Oz

My first film-writing gig opened my eyes in a lot of different ways. For a start, talking to other people who did the same thing, I realised that I had seen more movies than most of my peers. Not boasting, just a fact. However, I do believe that to be good at this, it is very important to have a depth and breadth of knowledge when it comes to the history of cinema. I like to think that good film journalists aren’t just critics shouting, “This is good. See it” or “This is shit. Avoid!” like carnival barkers. I think the good ones are cultural commentators who can say something about the art, craft and entertainment of film and filmmaking, with the ability to discuss movies contextually. If you are lucky, you can cast a sliver of light on things that people don’t tend to see or think about, refracted through your own experience, observations and opinions. And if I can impart even the tiniest nugget of the enthusiasm and giddy child-like wonder I feel about the big screen that I love so much, then I’ve done my job right.

“That's part of your problem: you haven't seen enough movies. All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.” – Grand Canyon

Now, here are a couple of dirty little secrets that the hermetically sealed film journalism community probably don’t want you to know, things that I learnt quite soon after my journey into the rarefied world of press passes and Soho screening rooms. A lot of film journalists don’t have the depth of knowledge to do the job well. A depressing percentage of my generation of writers believe cinema began with Star Wars. Even more mind-blowing, the next generation filling the pages of glossy magazines act as if cinema began with Pulp Fiction. This limited knowledge is hampered by the fact that most of the films they have seen have been churned out of the Hollywood meat-grinder. Access to a wide variety of films isn’t difficult, especially with the advent of multi-channel television and the proliferation of DVD.

Most film writers also suck. The standard of writing on the whole is poor. Don’t get me wrong – there are lots and lots of very talented film journalists out there. Sadly, there is a hell of a lot more bad ones. Like most industries, this is very much an “it’s who you know” business, and doors only tend to open if you know the guy on the other side with the keys in his pocket. You don’t succeed in this game by being the best. It’s all about the contacts.

Some film journos are frustrated wannabe filmmakers, who only are only in this game to get access to the talent and PR companies, thinking that they can sneak in the back door of the film industry. They probably can’t. But, damn, they are obnoxious.

Next time: research versus knowledge, “Don’t give up the day job”, and actually sitting through the movies. I bet you can’t wait, can you?

One last thing. Whilst writing this I’ve been listening to Imagination. I make no apologies for this. They were phenomenal. Don’t be a hater.

Do the Write Thing

“Dear Mr. Vernon: We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you're crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are.” – The Breakfast Club

The other day an old friend of mine asked me how many times I’d been to the cinema that week.
“Four. But that’s an aberration. Usually I try and go once a week. Why?”
“And how many films did you watch at home?”
“One. I usually watch one or two over a weekend. Why are you asking me these questions?”
“I just wanted to know what qualifies you to be a film journalist.”

As someone rarely short of words, that shut me up. In over four years of writing about movies, no one has ever asked me that question. I didn’t have an answer. But here’s what I tried to say to him then. (It’s worth noting that at the time, I’d already had two pints of cheap beer on an empty stomach, so I’m doing this without the benefit of muddy thinking and a thick tongue).

I have absolutely no professional writing qualifications. And, personally, that works for me. You might be able to teach people the craft or discipline of writing, you might be able to inspire them to want to write, but you either fill pages with words, or you don’t.

“Nobody teaches a writer anything. You tell them what you know. You tell them to find their voice and stick with it, because that's all you have in the end. You tell the ones who have it to keep at it and you tell the ones who don't to keep at it, too. Because that's the only way to get where you're going.” – Wonder Boys

Now, on to specifics. Why film journalism? (I refuse to use the designation “film critic” here. I don’t critique films, although I sometimes criticise them. I’m only interested in writing intelligently, educationally and, on my good days, entertainingly, about cinema.) The film journalism thing was a fluke. I was someone who wrote aimlessly. Scribbled stray thoughts in notebooks. Stole snatches of overheard conversations to use at a later date. Had great ideas for stories, which never went beyond the idea phase.

And then I had the opportunity to write something professionally about movies. So, given this chance to force myself to complete something, something with a deadline and a publication date, that people other than myself would read, I forced myself, with much anxiety and insecurity, to do it. Best thing I ever did.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself…my misadventures in the Screen Trade began long before that day. To be continued.

Reasons to be Cheerful Part 4

Soho in the Summer
Tony Montana and an Ambar
A new film by Almodóvar

New comics on a Thursday
A strong black coffee from a café
And a BMT from Subway

Finger-sucking Leslie Grantham
Something he really should abstain from
Made him look like a right plum

Cheap beer with my homies
Green Park and a light breeze
Sometimes I’m not that hard to please

Reasons to be cheerful
Just
For
Me